IBM

Let's talk about why IBM sucks.
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First, I have administered various AIX machines going back to 3.2.5 and the real RS/6000s with RSC CPUs, even prior to the PowerPC 601. I don't claim to have any experience with the z/Machines and their other really big iron, but I know my stuff with the small-to-medium size POWER boxes. I've rebuilt some of those servers from operating system tape on up. Later, we administered AIX 4 systems, and I even owned one personally (the Apple Network Server).

So when the time came to upgrade I bought this POWER6 because I like the AIX jackboots, and when it's configured right, it's a freight train. It's not very flexible, you really need to know what you're doing to get it started and it doesn't do well if it's not on a secure set of rails, but if you set it up properly and point it in the direction you want it to go, it's tough to stop.

But I'm sick of IBM's new licensing crap. It wasn't this way before. You bought the server and AIX came with it. You could download patches and APARs for free. If you have to swap out the hardware, you got what you put in it. If you wanted to upgrade it, you just bought the stuff and put it in. You didn't have to activate things, you didn't have to d*ck around with an LPAR not being licensed for however many cores.

When the POWER6 blew, the replacement board had an ancient firmware version on it that couldn't untangle itself from an HMC, and I couldn't configure it from ASMI to boot
any
operating system, and because I didn't have an HMC, I couldn't update the firmware because I didn't have permission from the HMC which wasn't there. So I reset the board to get control. I could update the firmware, all right, but I lost activation for the second core which I PAID FOR, DAMMIT. ASMI won't let me reactivate it because apparently the 8203 has to have it done through an HMC. So I'll be paying to buy an HMC to manage a single system EXACTLY ONE TIME to relicense the second core I already paid for! And you can bet that HMC I buy today (which is really a vanilla piece of crap 1U Xeon running the IBM software) won't work with future models.

Plus, IBM is now locking most of their website behind serial numbers, and if your serial number isn't one of their paying zombies, you're out in the cold. No more fixes and APARs for free. No more firmware downloads. IBM already didn't talk to people looking for direct sales, and now they won't talk to anyone without a service contract. Because by golly, they really hate people like me who can do the work on their own hardware without calling Big Blue and being financially violated.

I'm looking forward to OpenPOWER. Really, really, really looking forward to it, because I can run my favourite architecture and tell IBM to suck it. Even if I have to run Linux and can never run AIX again, I am so sick of this bullsh*t.

Too late, it's already purchased. Besides, my vendor, who are not jerks like IBM, actually cut me a very nice deal and then I don't have to worry about any glitches if turns out the VBoxed HMC software doesn't behave exactly the same.

ClassicHasClass wrote:
Hopefully OpenPOWER launches and hangs on for at least one more processor generation (POWER9 or so), and then I can jump to that last generation until the bitter end.

I wonder if it matters ... the internet is already on the verge of being useless (fiber to the home shopping channel) and open sores is running a close second in the bankrupt ideas marathon. There's always tropical fish ...

So today the HMC arrived. The vendor had kindly updated the HMC software on it for me, so it was ready to go. Fired it up. It found the server. It prompted me for the processor activation code. I typed it in. There was a pregnant pause, and then

HSCL9017 HSCL0500 A CUoD processor activation code to permanently activate 2 processors has been entered. The sequence number of the CoD code indicates that this code has been used before. Obtain a new CoD code and try again.

F$%k me. So, my second main core is deactivated because your damn little service processor lost its mind, but NOT ENOUGH OF ITS MIND to accept the code that originally activated it, and I'm going to have to ask IBM, with whom I do not have a service contract, to GIVE ME A NEW CODE FOR THE PROCESSOR I ALREADY BOUGHT.

Hopefully my vendor can do the regeneration, or else I guess I have a "free spare core."

At least now I know why ASMI wouldn't take the code, though Error 254 Could not complete request is a less than useless error message.

I really hope Tyan makes a POWER8 box so I can upgrade to that instead of waging war against another IBM box the next time this happens.

Plus, if you do have plans on running Solaris (and if I were looking for UNIX with a support contract, Solaris is probably where I'd go), it's ported to platforms for which Tyan makes motherboards as well.

It will of course be interesting to see what happens with OpenPOWER, but I have a feeling it will take a while to become a commercially available product you can acquire any way other than either hovering around
Google's dumpsters
, or literally fabbing the chips and building the boards yourself. (In the fires of the Forest of Doom or whatever.)

If you're interested in Linux but you really are just completely opposed to x86-64 (just to put out there what Tyan is building), you could investigate the
nVidia Jetson
, ARM development board.

I don't really know what else is out there in terms of "open" platforms that aren't Intel. Is there like, an ATX board that will accommodate an Itanium processor hanging around, or something?

Cory5412 wrote:
I don't really know what else is out there in terms of "open" platforms that aren't Intel. Is there like, an ATX board that will accommodate an Itanium processor hanging around, or something?

Essentially any modern CPU family (with the possible exception of SPARC, which is rather insular...) has ATX boards if you look hard enough. Intel does the "Crater Lake" SDV boards for Itanium, Broadcom has a series of ATX boards for their high-performance MIPS processors, Applied Micro has an eval board for X-Gene, etc. That being said, they are all likely to be more expensive than a generic off-the-shelf x86 board; yay for economies of scale.

ClassicHasClass, you might take a look at the Freescale stuff. Definitely a different kind of PPC from the IBM's, but not necessarily in a bad way - the T4240, despite being strangely architected, is a solid performer. With that you're looking at a 64-bit 12-core (or 24-core, depending on how you measure it) CPU around 1.8GHz, with VMX, multiple on-chip 10gig MACs, PCIe, and DDR3 - in a power footprint of something like thirty watts. i think there are some boards for the T4240 on Avnet. (By the way, this is the CPU that IBM's prototype microservers are using.)

LSI also does "high-performance" PPC, although not nearly as high-end as Freescale does - they use the PPC476 core, which is a
superb
core if you're looking for low-power and don't need 64-bit support or VMX. i suspect the 476 stuff would be a little underpowered for you though.

It's not AIX. It's the hardware itself. AIX's licensing is actually pretty simple (if you have the hardware, you are entitled to run AIX). The problem is that the hardware prevented me from getting the features turned on I already paid for, but that's at a far lower level than the operating system.

Similarly, it's not PowerPC that's the problem, it's the IBM big POWER servers. That's why I have high hopes for OpenPOWER, though they've been dashed before.

I knew that IBM licensed hardware per core on mainframes, but this about POWER is new to me. Does this mean, then, that if you buy a used POWER6 you then also have to pay IBM to get the cores activated? Is IBM the only maker that operates this way?

A couple years ago, I read that Oracle's predatory pricing and stalled development of SPARC was driving clients to IBM. I wonder if IBM is now driving some back.